The Betrayed (14 page)

“What do you think?” George asked her after they left the tent.

“Well, I don’t trust him,” Mali spoke after a while. “He seems well-spoken, has bright eyes, and does look like someone an officer might choose to promote in the heat of a battle. But his story is a bit disjointed.”

“Could be the stress of the battle,” George offered.

“Ah, now you’re taking his side!” She punched her colonel on the shoulder.

George flushed. “Not here. Not in front of my men,” he whispered.

Mali made an indignant face. “Oh, don’t you think the rutting sounds you make in the night are a bit of a giveaway?”

“I don’t make sounds,” he hissed.

Mali sobered. “I have made some serious mistakes back there,” she said, pointing at the gray and blue hills hidden in the mist of a summer day. “I should not have combined troops from different garrisons.”

“We didn’t have the required manpower yet. We had no choice.” George tried to cheer her.

“I got them killed.”

George shook his head. “Kal Armis knew what he was doing when he volunteered to lead that scum. He was a good and brave man.”

Mali ran a hand through her hair. “Has Marco said anything yet?”

George bit a cuticle off one finger and spat it. “He’s sent some men inquiring. Maybe one of the soldiers from the other battalions will be able to recognize this Adam.”

Mali slanted her head. “Did he appoint anyone yet instead of William?”

“Not yet.”

Mali smiled wickedly. “I have a brilliant idea.” When George said nothing, she continued. “This Adam is not someone to have around. We should send him away. Ask Marco to promote him to captain and assign him to the new battalion from Yovarc.”

“More convicts?” George asked.

“Peasants. Then, we send him back to fight the Caytoreans. He’ll have a chance to redeem himself and win the lost ground. If he’s who he truly claims he is, I bet his soul screams for revenge.”

“Won’t that be suicide?”

Mali seemed adamant. “I’m not sure. We need to get past those hills. And I see no easy way of doing it. And if that man has lived through that battle, then he might be blessed by the gods.”

“You’re a vicious one.”

“I’m the commander of Eracia’s South Army. It takes a basketful of balls to lead this lot.”

“I’m not sure Marco will approve. He’s lost a good third of his troops. Now you suggest thinning his forces even more?”

“We’ll give Adam an independent battalion. He’ll report directly to you.”

George puffed. “Marco will hate this.”

“It has to be done.”

“What about kal Armis’s regulars?”

The bulk of professional soldiers that the captain had led before accepting the grisly task of training and leading conscripts had been temporarily assigned as auxiliary troops to other standing regiments. No one seemed to like the arrangement. Local commanders did not feel comfortable babysitting a bunch of well-trained, cocky soldiers, while kal Armis’s men despised everyone for being orphaned from their unit and turned into decorations.

Grudgingly, Mali accepted George’s unspoken plan. “Yes, we could assign them to Adam’s battalion. They, too, must be hungry for revenge.”

“Well, at least he’ll have some normal troops to work with.”

“They won’t like him,” Mali warned. “Some of the lieutenants have been waiting for promotion for years. They will expect one of them to assume kal Armis’s post.”

“This man alone has come out alive from a battle that no one else survived. It must mean something.”

Mali snorted. “He could be very adept at hiding in bushes and donning clothes quickly. But if he’s truly blessed as you think he is, then he has nothing to lose, nor do we.”

Adam thought his scam had been exposed. Calmly, he waited for the officers to return, declare him a traitor or something of the kind, take him outside, and run him through with cold steel. He sat and waited, because there was nothing else he could do. Dead men rarely had options.

Finally, they came in and promoted him to captain.

CHAPTER 12

A
yrton watched the city burn.

A pall of smoke hovered above Talmath, not a puff of wind to stir it. Everyone sniffed and sneezed or coughed, their soft tissues irritated by the smoke and ashes. Tears coursed freely down their soot-smeared cheeks.

Ayrton stared as the lower parts of Talmath died in the red flames of a huge conflagration, dark smoke billowing, blotting the landscape. Unseen behind the thick screen of destruction, the Caytorean forces parked in their thousands, watching the grisly show unravel.

The massive fighting had ended in fires spreading all across the shabbier parts of the holy city. It had been two days since. No one could stop the flames. They burned mightily, consuming everything in their path.

The upper city was crammed with refugees. There was not a soul left in the lower city. Whoever had stayed or failed to flee had perished.

Talmath was in chaos. People had been reduced to animals, fighting for sheer survival. A dream of holiness and peace had turned into a bloodbath. People raped and butchered one another even as a foreign enemy sought to exterminate them all.

Having only a token wall surrounding it, Talmath had always relied on the goodwill of the people to remain a functioning city. Most of it was indefensible. The little force the patriarchs had mustered had been unable to check the Caytorean army. The siege had quickly turned into bitter street-to-street fighting. Ayrton really hoped he would be able to forget some of the images he had witnessed.

The vast, sprawling sea of tents that had run for almost a mile ahead of the city wall had been reduced to crumbs. Most of the wooden huts that housed the poorest of the city’s tenants were also gone, sapped or burned. And the rest of it was burning, houses, temples, shops.

He was not really sure how the fire had started. He even suspected it had been deliberately set by the friendly forces. It had seemed like the only thing that could stop the Caytoreans.

The raging fires had finally convinced the fighting parties to retreat. The enemy had gone back to its camps outside Talmath. And the city defenders had pulled back into the upper reaches of the city, on the hill that gave Talmath its distinctive look. Now, they waited for the fires to die out.

People had congregated in the city center, at the Grand Monastery. The usual city congestion had turned into a hive of madness and despair.

Having nowhere else to go, refugees huddled near siege engines and slept in the gutters. Oblivious, children ran about, emulating the soldiers, earning kicks and curses as they dodged and darted, getting in the way, while their mothers prostituted themselves for crumbs and torn scraps of blankets.

Disease had not yet struck, but it was very close. Having no place to bury the dead, the priests had the dead burned. Food was rationed out once a day, with soldiers whipping hungry masses into some semblance of order. Nonetheless, most of it got stolen right away.

Ayrton watched people around him become savage, ruthless beasts. Outsiders like him almost too eagerly turned back to their old ways. Many of his brothers-in-arms had several women in their custody, whose favors they paid back with shelter and protection. Brawls never stopped as animals fought for territory. Every fifth man ended up stabbed or beaten by his comrades, when they were all supposed to fight together against the Caytoreans.

Ayrton stood on the balcony of a temple temporarily turned into a barracks, watching a team of engineers bring down entire rows of houses in a feeble attempt to keep the fires from spreading. A circle of debris marked the ghostly alley that separated the dead and abandoned lower city from an anthill of refugees.

Three stories below him, an artillery crew manhandled their onager. They were trying to bring it to bear north, with little success. A wagon full of rocks lay nearby, its wheels broken. All around, a sea of refugees sat in tightly packed rows, dozing and moaning or simply staring into nothingness. Soldiers prowled the battered masses, singling out women they could use. Bigger children were put to work, hauling things. Any boy or male adult was conscripted on the spot and given a weapon. Most of the time, they got sent to work in the lower parts, bringing down houses, lugging the dead, or preparing defenses.

It was the spotless image of an unholy city, Ayrton thought.

Ayrton watched it with all the helplessness of a soldier. He had fought dozens of times in his life as a mercenary. He had seen and done horrible things. Never before had his despair seemed so profound.

He commanded a unit of twenty men, a score of saints in the den of filth and sin. In the first days of war, while some sanity still existed, the patriarchs had organized some sort of an army, most of it small, independent groups of former soldiers or menat-arms, supposed to uphold the integrity of the Territories and defend its people. But as quickly as the army was born, it died.

Luckily, he was a commander. Although his appointment had been almost arbitrary, the patriarchs had selected him well among the lot. It had really worked in the first few days. The priests had managed to rally people, instill them with hope and zeal. Now, no one cared anymore what they said. Ayrton felt his authority was in peril. He had no real sway over his soldiers, only a token blessing, granted almost too lightly. Unless he proved a bigger animal than they, they would challenge him sooner or later.

And yet, he had sworn never to do those things again. He had fled to the Territories to never have to do those things again.

But the things had found him.

He knew the only way Talmath could survive was for the patriarchs to take leadership of the people. But they seemed too busy deliberating rather than fighting. There was no real chain of command, no figure of power that the other animals could respect and fear.

Ayrton hoped that other cities fared better. Maybe they had had enough time to organize their defenses properly. Talmath desperately needed leadership. It was almost, if not already, too late.

Screams startled him. Looking down, he saw one of the Outsiders drag a girl from the lot. She protested, kicking, trying to grab hold of people around her. They squirmed like spineless things and let her slip. They watched with apathetic, dumb expressions on their faces.

Something snapped inside Ayrton.

He raced down the stairway, two steps at a time, the sword at his hip clanking and scraping against the wall. He rushed outside, trampling over refugees, plowing his way toward the man and his prey.

“Hey, you, halt right there!” he shouted.

“She’s mine,” the man growled.

Ayrton did not pause. He drew his sword, stepped forward, and stabbed the man in the gut. A look of surprise twisted the man’s features. Ayrton pulled the sword free. The soldier groaned and stumbled. Almost instantly, people started stripping him of his clothes and possessions.

“Enough,” Ayrton howled. Fortunately, he had been blessed with a deep, powerful voice. “This madness stops right now. Soldiers, get these refugees away. From now on, no civilian is allowed within the premises of a military post. Get them out.”

Pale faces watched him. But no one moved against him. Their shock and fear was obvious. Stupid animals.

“Move!” he shrieked.

One of the soldiers sobered. “Who do you think you are, you bas—”

The man never finished the sentence. His severed head hit the wall of the temple and tumbled away.

“We are servants of the gods. Anyone found defiling this holy place with sin will be executed. Get moving!”

The rest obeyed. They milled aimlessly at first, but slowly they formed into a cohesive body and began evacuating the refugees. The people protested, begging for food and the chance to stay, but the soldiers finally managed to push them outside the temple walls. A screen of quiet sanity descended on the little post.

Ayrton glared at the soldiers around him, a horde of fifty former murderers, rapists, and mercenaries. They would shred him to pieces the first moment he showed a hint of weakness. But as long as he remained the supreme beast in the lot, they would follow him.